


Dignity and Death, Hand in Hand

by enmity



Category: Kingdom Hearts (Video Games)
Genre: Gen, ft. cameos from CoM
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-26
Updated: 2020-06-26
Packaged: 2021-03-04 01:27:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,150
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24925375
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/enmity/pseuds/enmity
Summary: “I can’t save you. Not even a memory of you.”Naminé and Xion come to a decision.
Relationships: Naminé/Xion (Kingdom Hearts)
Comments: 6
Kudos: 18





	Dignity and Death, Hand in Hand

**Author's Note:**

> Dialogues cribbed from: CoM, 358/2 Days

The girl across the room has a face like hers.

The same blue eyes, the same rounded chin and flushed cheeks—but that’s not right, is it? Naminé never smiles like that.

It’s the smile that gives her away first. Not the rough chop of hair framing her face or the coat casting a familiar shadow across the walls, the color a smear of charcoal against ghastly white paper.

The black makes her think of the boy, the one who’s not asleep, who stops by the mansion after disappearing for days at a time, skulking tetchily in the glaring halls, expression hooded and shoulders hunched. 

He’s a knight when he wants to be, standing with his blade in ceaseless wait for an enemy who never comes, who will come, because she’s come to understand Riku is only around so long as something is wrong; so long as things are not as they should be.

But he isn’t here today. Downstairs, DiZ is silent, Sora is sleeping, and Naminé lifts her gaze from the growing blot on the page to look at her, sitting in the space where Riku isn’t.

_Xion._

Her fingers grip the paper edges.

**5**

“ _I’ve been waiting to meet you_.”

An aberration. A thing which should not be.

She remembers telling Sora everything. The truth. About his memories. About her, and the loneliness pulling him to the Castle, welling up like a chasm in the place inside her where a heart should be.

She remembers giving him a choice. She remembers the promise he made.

No more lies _,_ he said, pinky upturned to link with hers, and the grin he cast her way pledged as much.

**4**

“ _What do you want to do?_ ”

What was it that Axel told her, once? There was only one place a Nobody could wind up. He said it from a place of blitheful rue, the same way he spoke of his erstwhile colleagues dying one after the other, her mockery of a fairytale unraveling at the seams all the while. Like he understood something rationally to be regrettable but couldn’t be urged to care. She pitied that about him; a part of her did, anyway.

Because Naminé knew, had known that, and she didn’t mind. Even if she couldn’t feel Kairi, even if there was truly nothing she could return to… where she ended up wouldn’t matter so much as whether she’d done her part in piecing back the chains holding Sora’s memories together.

She wouldn’t mind facing oblivion if it meant she’d have kept her half of the promise. Fixed what she did wrong, even if he wouldn’t know it, when it was all over and done with. For Sora. It was, after all, the least of what she owed.

**3**

“ _If you return your memories to him, you’ll disappear.”_

When a person dies, they are mourned. Naminé knows this, from the distant recollection of perusing a book Larxene had left splayed and creased on the floor in the aftermath of an outburst. She knows they are mourned because they were part of another’s heart, once. Carved their mark in others’ lives simply by being, because a bleeding, feeling heart can accomplish so readily what the strongest of her so-called magic cannot, and it was Marluxia who told her that.

But she isn’t. She isn’t in anyone’s heart. She never was. And is it such a terrible thing, the back of her mind echoes, for a Nobody to disappear?

A year is no short time, give or take. She’s spent quite much of it coming to terms. Resigning.

But it isn’t quite the same to tell someone else that.

Xion’s eyes remain (bright, determined, exactly like his) steady, even as Naminé’s words weave carefully through the caveats holding her existence together, and it fills her mouth with ash to put the ultimatum in simple terms, to tell the girl it’s someone else’s life she’s borrowing her time from.

That Sora is human and she is (they are) Nobody and when it all comes down to it, Naminé thinks—no, she knows—isn’t that all the explanation anybody needs? 

Witch. Puppet. Either, or. At the end of the day, it’s the truth.

So she shoves away the phantom sensation chafing at her empty chest, the glass shards and the stale static. It doesn’t matter how she feels. It never did.

She finds she is entirely too tired to be guilty, and thanks herself for it.

**2**

“ _No one will remember you when you’re gone.”_

She doesn’t know how to tell Xion that she’s trapped. What would become of her if she says no? Naminé considers. Riku wouldn’t stay put, not when it’s Sora’s memories on the line, and DiZ…

She imagines DiZ would be quick to finish the thought for her, given the chance.

She could stop talking now, Naminé thinks. Would it make it easier for her, not to know?

But her mind flickers back to the replica Riku, and the way he’d looked at her when he came to, his heart newly broken and reformed. Those acid-colored eyes accusing and desperate all at once, pleading for a clemency no apology of hers could provide. She couldn’t tell him the truth in time before reality came crashing down, and after that the damage had been done: it was too late for confessions of regret or guilt.

So she only watched as he slipped past the heavy doors to disappear, footsteps fading all too quickly, and there was no comfort to be found in the small thought that maybe, maybe it didn’t matter what she said or chose not to, whether she’d ripped his heart out to shatter or if she hadn’t; he would’ve made the same choice either way.

She still wonders it, sometimes. But she can’t very well ask him now.

So she keeps talking.

**1**

“ _I can’t save you_. _Not even a memory of you._ ”

Naminé breathes, her empty chest strangely heavy, and looks through downturned eyelashes at the girl in front of her.

Xion’s calm expression doesn’t change. The curve of her mouth has settled, unbroken as the surface of a tideless sea, and Naminé recognizes that look now, a familiar voice slamming into her mind with sudden, smarting clarity.

Do it! I don’t care, it pleads _._ Erase my memories, break my heart…

The paper creases. Her fingertips smudge with graphite. She hasn’t forgotten.

Sora would make the right decision. She knows he would.

But Xion wears Sora’s smile like a hero’s crown, brave and sincere, and the part of Naminé that’s dead and guiltless and tired is telling her what she’s always known to be true: she would have done it.

She wouldn’t have said no.

**0**

I understand, she nods. I’m ready. I just don’t know how… that’s why I’m here.

“ _If you’re ready—let’s go see Sora,_ ” she says, and finds herself smiling too.


End file.
